Larix kaempferi (Japanese Larch)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Larix kaempferi, photographed by Stephen James McWilliam — fig. a Stephen James McWilliam, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 198171546

Larix kaempferi, photographed by Se Lena — fig. b Se Lena, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153880364

Larix kaempferi, photographed by Marco Mussita — fig. c Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 138054465

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 1 botanical country

Native distribution of Larix kaempferi, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Japan	JAP	ASIA-TEMPERATE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 286 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	-17.5 °C	-10.0 °C	2.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	16.4 °C	21.4 °C	25.9 °C
Annual rainfall	781 mm	1,625 mm	2,875 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	103 mm	213 mm	407 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 286 research-grade observations of Larix kaempferi that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 22 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Abies kaempferi (Lamb.) Lindl.
Abies leptolepis Siebold & Zucc.
Laricopsis kaempferi (Lamb.) Kent
Larix japonica A.Murray bis
Larix japonica hort. ex Carrière
Larix kaempferi f. pendula Yonek.
Larix kaempferi f. rubescens (Inokuma) T.Shimizu
Larix kaempferi var. pendula C.K.Schneid.
Larix kaempferi var. rubescens Inokuma
Larix leptolepis (Siebold & Zucc.) Gordon
Larix leptolepis f. minor (A.Murray bis) Rehder
Larix leptolepis f. pendula (Beissn.) Sugim.
Larix leptolepis var. louchanensis Ferré & Augère
Larix leptolepis var. minor A.Murray bis
Larix leptolepis var. murrayana Maxim.
Larix orientalis Thunb.
Pinus japonica Thunb.
Pinus kaempferi Lamb.
Pinus larix Thunb.
Pinus leptolepis (Siebold & Zucc.) Endl.
Pinus nummularia Gordon
Pseudolarix kaempferi (Lamb.) Gordon & Glend.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.